The high penalties of staying in the EU

I REFER to your correspondent’s letter “Get ready for a second EU referendum” (December 10).

Your correspondent is appealing to the younger voters to register to enable them to vote to remain in the EU because he says that they, the universities and the NHS will be better off.

Let us examine what he is telling our young people. He says that the UK will save £40bn if a second referendum reverses the leave vote which could be spent on the NHS and universities.

The £40bn to which he refers can only be the divorce bill to be paid over a number of years that the EU is extorting from the UK when it leaves. What he ignores is that the UK currently pays £13bn each year into the EU coffers which will continue for

eternity if we remain in the EU. There will be no saving and the costs to the UK and effect on its universities and NHS will be infinitely more.

With regard to the UK’s payment to the EU, ignoring Germany, the UK’s net contribution is greater than the net contribution of all the other 26 countries combined. In fact 20 of those countries make no net contribution at all because they receive large subsidies and grants. In return for loans, subsidies and grants controlled and distributed by the European Commission those countries have, in effect, become provinces handing over their sovereignty, law making and negotiation of international business affairs to the unelected European Commission.

If we look at countries which do make a net contribution, Italy has massive debts and has recently presented its nation’s budget to the unelected EU Commission. They rejected it and told Italy to go away and revise it under threat of large financial and legal penalties. France is struggling to control its debts and recently introduced a stringent austerity programme which included closing 200 schools.

As a result its people erupted into the “yellow vest” protests in which so far four people have died and hundreds injured. Spain and Portugal, while making minor net contributions

to the EU budget, are also struggling with major debt problems.

The remainers’ argument for staying subservient to the EU is an economic argument. Instead of being in control of our sovereignty with a parliament which is accountable to the people of the UK, they say we will be “better off” being subservient the EU over which we have little or no control.

Their argument is flawed because while it accepts the supposed benefits to business of being in the EU, it ignores the cost of a fundamental principle of the Treaty of Rome which is The Freedom of Movement of Workers. This principle allows uncontrolled emigration of people from less developed to fully developed EU countries and, because English is now effectively a world language, is particularly bad for Britain. Migration Watch UK reported that over a three-year period before the Brexit referendum, an average of 335,000 immigrants, most from the EU, had entered Britain. At that rate every three years we have to provide the equivalent of our second city Birmingham complete with its infrastructure to accommodate immigrants.

The sooner we take back control of our country the better.

Eric Staley, Findern